The next Samsung phone could feature more megapixels than any other phone before it, as Samsung says hello to 200 in a new phone camera sensor.
Wondering just what will be in the next Samsung S23 Ultra before February’s launch hits? We have a good idea, and it’s because of something Samsung announced this week: a new camera sensor made for its phones.
While news of a new camera sensor mightn’t set the world on fire, the news Samsung is talking up is sure to get folks curious, thanks in part to the massive size it comes with.
Most phones tend to max out at 12 or 16 or 27 megapixels, while last year’s iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max offered a 48 megapixel sensor that downscaled to 12 megapixels. Samsung’s S22 Ultra used a 108 megapixel sensor, similar technology to its S21 Ultra and S20 Ultra siblings, with that massive camera sensor able to downsample to 27 megapixels, a camera technology Samsung worked on with Xiaomi.
But as impressive as that sensor was and has been, it might not hold a cancel to Samsung’s latest, the Isocell HP2, which features a whopping 200 megapixels. Yes, you read that right.
Samsung’s Isocell HP2 will get those 200 megapixels into the same size normally used for its 108 megapixel sensor, which gives us a firm idea just what we can expect on the upcoming S23 Ultra, with the sensor able to improve the light output and act like a bigger sensor with four times the image data in a 50 megapixel sensor or 16 times the quality in a 12 megapixel image (12.5 to be exact). It should mean more light for images, and possibly zooming using cropping, getting you closer similar to how Leica’s Q-series cameras works by cropping down a big sensor to a smaller megapixel amount.
The 200 megapixel size is just one part of the new chip, with support for 8K video capture, HDR, and a way for the sensor to automatically focus using all of the pixels in the sensor, over 200 million of the things.
Of course, Samsung hasn’t said what phones you can expect to see its new Isocell HP2 camera sensor in, beyond noting it “has entered mass production”, but given the mobile maker has a launch in the next few weeks for its 2023 range of Galaxy S phones, we think you can guess exactly where we’ll see the hardware get launched.
